READY FOR ANY FITNESS CHALLENGE

Leblanc-Bazinet preparing for next week’s Reebok CrossFit Games

It would be quite the interesting existence hanging regularly with one of the fittest women in the world.

Camille Leblanc-Bazinet could be walking down the street, spot a loose manhole cover, and hoist it for the heck of it. She could scale a construction scaffolding and whip out 50 consecutive pull-ups. She could find a random log on the beach, drape it across her shoulders and run a few miles.

Challenge Leblanc-Bazinet to just about anything and she’d try it. She has always been that way.

“I feel like if there’s some path that has the danger sign or that seems too hard, I want that one,” she said in her thick, French-Canadian accent. “If you don’t frickin’ do it, who’s going to?”

In a short four years, the 24-year-old who trains in San Diego has become the female face and voice of CrossFit, an extreme workout discipline that is rapidly growing as a competitive sport. Next week at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Leblanc-Bazinet will be among the favorites to win the 7th Reebok CrossFit Games.

At the Games, athletes from around the world push their bodies to absolute extremes over three days — running, lifting weights, climbing ropes, jumping ropes and performing gymnastics, and many of those things in crazy combinations — to achieve the CrossFit motto of “Fittest on Earth.”

And here’s the caveat: The competitors will have no idea exactly what the various “workouts” will be until hours before they are staged.

Last year, the organizers sprang a triathlon at Camp Pendleton on the field as a warm-up for the next three grueling days. Leblanc-Bazinet finished the triathlon bloodied, with four toenails missing. Then the 5-foot-2, 130-pound former elite gymnast shrugged that off and notched a career-best finish of sixth overall.

With some world records already notched in the qualifying and the intense, four-hour workouts she does at the Invictus “box” gym in downtown San Diego, Leblanc-Bazinet has become the woman tabbed by many as most likely to stand atop the CrossFit podium this year.

“Her dedication is bigger than any athlete I’ve ever worked with,” said CJ Wilson, the lead trainer and owner of Invictus. “She is committed to being absolutely perfect.”

Leblanc-Bazinet started CrossFit as a workout at about the same time she began working on a chemical engineering degree at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. She was intent on maintaining her straight As until CrossFit came along. Now she jokes that she’s just trying to get through three more semesters while she maintains her focus on trying to become a world champ.

“Obsession? Oh, yeah,” she said. “It’s always been an obsession with me to get better at stuff. I like the challenge of not being good at something and then trying to become the best at it. Most people find reward in things they’re already good at. There’s no reward in that. There’s a pride in fighting for something that you know you should be good at, and ending up victorious. That’s the biggest reward I can give myself. I embrace my weaknesses. I do that every day. I cry a lot because I push myself.”